Match Day. Round 1 Sydney V Port Adelaide SCG. 4.35pm.

[aardvark]

Just reading the Stats, did anyone notice how many tackles KJ and Hanners got together?

[Joel Ridge]

[QUOTE=mcs;719203]Just home after a disappointing trip up the highway. I will comment more tomorrow but in summary port were consistently leading us to the ball all day and thoroughly deserve the win. Only other thoughts for tonight are our bottom six were dreadful and showed our issue with depth, i just don't get towers, and welcome back sammy reid - him and buddy were our best two on thr field i thought.

Itll get nasty next week if we play like that against the 21 man fairypuppies.

MCS, I was making the point that this is the most even competition since 1997. With the exception of GWS, there are probably 13 teams who could beat each other on any given day. Look at other results. Dons beat the Hawks, Melbourne beat St Kilda, Collingwood went close against the premiers.

The Swans simply got beaten by a strong middle team and these teams will take games off each other all year. Analysis of this season requires a wholistic view of the competition rather than just analysing Swan player performances. The Swans will probably win a maximum of 14 or 15 games this season and still make top 4. You just need to get on board for an exciting ride.

I can't comment on player performances as I have not watched the replay.

[Swanny40519]

I was really surprised how we slipped and fell over all game. Mills fumbled the ball a lot and Towers and Cunningham should never play seniors again - they were both deplorable with no skill, no hardness at the ball or the player.

Hanners - what happened he couldn't get into the game at all. Smith and Laidler were both very loose and fumbled the ball.

Plus we were smashed at the centre bounces and Port were just too strong.

Very disappointing effort and until we get some more players back we will struggle to compete.

[Auntie.Gerald]

Ok so where is the upside ?

Firstly when the ball did get in our attacking half last year and it was players like Paps and Heeney and Rohan that scrapped and pressured and made it count. This three guys didn't play last night.

In comparisonYoung, wingard, SPP killed it as small medium talls. 7 goals came from these 3. Me thinks our 3 guys missing could have got 6 between the minimum.

KJ, Rampe and Hannes probably haven't had worse games. They will go from a 5/10 to a 10/10 next week. In short they didn't impose them self on the game when it mattered most. In fact they had shockers by their standards.

AA coming back in will make a huge difference re matchups

Although I like Laids as a depth player the guy really struggled last night. Yes in part because of quick clreances coming in from port but also players like Young when he picked him up laids couldn't keep up. Young got 3 goals last night. AA in defence and rebound was fantastic last year and he will be vital to help us stay in the contest against the Dogs

Foote and towers looked really off the pace but honestly struggled big time with their decision making. Oli was struggling to keep up but he is different to towers and foote in that he has genuine skill for AFL and just needs time in the game to rise above.

Naismith and tippo couldn't tie Ryder's not laces yest. Wow Ryder made our midfield job a nightmare.

I realise that we are pushing the game hard back thru the middle via hands to get that quick break but I felt we really are off the pace and forcing mistake in this area at the moment.

The performance against port will see a 6 goal loss against the Dogs minimum

I just want to see a great 4 qtr effort by the swans and that will do me

Lastly port certainly pressured us into an inferior performance and if they play like that and clear like they did around the ruck they will be very hard to beat.

[barry]

no paps nor AA nor Rohan ?

i think they make a difference

AA and paps are youngsters. It would be a sad state of affairs if we rely on them to win games.

And Rohan has gone missing in to many high stake games (eh. Grand final) to rely on either.

[lwjoyner]

re defensive coach, yes its the same bloke we couldn't chip kick on our backline last yr so he obviously has not learnt any thing. the backwards kicking on back line still as bad.

[Auntie.Gerald]

Hey Barry
I disagree
The replacements for Rohan, paps, heeney and AA did not play well yest and of course some of our key midfielders did not either

Rohan, heeney and paps min 25 goals each last season and that's 3 or 4 goals as a minimum we didn't get yest ......they could have easily matched the 7 goals from Young, Wingard and SPP ....... we had enough entries !!!

AA was so far ahead after only a few games last year and to be honest I was devistated he couldn't play the GF last year

Agree re Rohan not standing up in GF but the capacity for our forward entries when u have Reid, Tippo, bud, heeney and Rohan on the lead ......well it simply becomes over whelming for most defences in the competition..... that is 5 great leads and we only had 3 yest

Buddy roams free when u have an extra target target or two and defenders are stretched to the max with those 5 above rotating thru the forward line

As we know in most tight games all it takes is for a few goals to happen in a small amount of time and the game falls from ur grasp

I am positive if the 4 players above played we could have tipped the game away from port in the second and third qtrs hence why I'm not slashing my wrists

I think our midfield can play much better and our backline and forward line will improve with players returning

One last comment was that we ended up in the last few rounds with Mitchell and heeney rotating thru the midfield

That is two very significant players missing from our midfield and with those two in addition to our players yest we broke a lot of opposition midfielders last year.......take those two out and suddenly we are back with the competition in the midfield rotation and we didn't dominate the HUNT

[barry]

You could be right, but to be a premiership contender we need to be able to beat teams like port at home while missing a few players. Only one top 15 players was unavailable.

[stellation]

I found myself strangely nonplussed with the loss. I thought there were enough encouraging things to feel like we'll be fine.

[MattW]

I'm not saying that the sky is falling in, but the same deficiency that's blighted us at least since the 2014 GF remains - a soft underbelly. The bottom 4 players last night are not premiership quality players. That's Towers, Robinson, Foote, Cunningham. I know it?s early in Foote's career, but early impression is poor. We know Laidler has lost the pace to do what he does best - intercept mark and spoil. We need to replace those players over the course of the year.

Heeney and Aliir are two elite players to return and they'll improve us a lot. Rohan and Papley will also improve us in regular season games, although are yet to prove they can be dependable in really big games. McVeigh will be an improvement on those players, but is now bottom 6 in our best 22. For me, Hewett is too. He's neither quick or strong enough to win clean ball in contested situations.

Hoping someone like Dawson or Hayward can quickly come on; they'll need to.

Just looking at the stats, only Florent and Robinson (obviously) played fewer minutes than Hannebery. I'm not sure whether that was due to his head knock late in the game or whether he carried something into the game.

[chrispy2808]

There's a bit of Chicken Licken on this site tonight. Can we at least wait until Easter before completely writing the season off?

I agree 1 game in and according to the majority here the seasons over!
The only good thing is there in not the usual umpire bashing when we lose.
I suppose that's an improvement.

[dejavoodoo44]

I agree 1 game in and according to the majority here the seasons over!
The only good thing is there in not the usual umpire bashing when we lose.
I suppose that's an improvement.

Well, I thought that the umpiring was crap, especially some of the soft frees given against defenders; but it was crap both ways, with each team being on the end of some mystifying decisions.

[Industrial Fan]

A bit too much umpiring for me, but we weren't hard done by imo.

It was a case of being outplayed. Port worked harder than we did.

[dejavoodoo44]

We are losing everywhere!! Wish I could see the stats but the afl app is stuffed.

Really really disappointing. Can't believe how bad we are playing.

One more quarter to hopefully pull something out. The rain doesn't help!



Sent from my HTC_PN071 using Tapatalk

In regards to the "data not yet available" glitch, that seems to have been introduced with the compulsory update to the mobile app, there is a way of working around that. Instead of doing the logical thing and clicking on the game you want on the home page, what you do is, firstly, click on the "view all matches" option. This brings you to a page that has the options, "fixtures", "results", "by team" and "by venue". Click on "fixtures". This gives you a list of games. Select the game you want and on the next screen, click on "stats". This then gives you all the stats that the previous page claimed were unavailable.

[annew]

Imagine this, you are a team that cannot play a large number of your senior and best players for 12 months, their bodies get rested cos they are not injured (look how good Sam was after a year out and he was injured), you play your second tier players for 12 months, with no pressure to win, in the seniors, what an amazing learning experience, you get the first draft pick cos you finish bottom and you get a soft draw cos of finishing bottom, you are a big Melb team with a lot of fans, your senior players return - how good can you be? Then imagine this, you have played finals forever, you lost last years GF in part due to bad umpiring but the game was there up until the last 10 minutes, you are the 3rd youngest team, you have a few critical players out injured, you are 4 weeks behind a team that finished 10th who are playing for their lives, in a couple of years you have lost a heap of experience and been handed unfair trade bans, you have a shocker of a game BUT is the season over or are you simply a great team that wasnt quite ready for round 1? I remain positive and I know
I would rather support the second team than the first. Sick of hearing about all the advantages swans have been handed over the years what about the other teams in the comp that have been handed advantages?